February 20, 2013

Garakuse!

In Mondaijitachi there's something that Izayoi shouts when his opponent has used a finishing move which doesn't actually finish Izayoi. We hear it first when he
defeats the water god in the first episode and again when
Leticia throws the lance at him and yet again when
Algol fires a stoning beam at him.

It sounds to me like garakuse. Variously it gets translated as "Not happening!" or "Little too soon for that!" or "That's all you can do?!" I can't find it in the dictionary; what is it he's saying?

1
I found a copy of the first episode, and between the music and the water, what I can make out is "sharakusei" (19:00, if anyone else wants to play along). A search for しゃらくせい turned up a bunch of Q&A sites where people were asking where it came from. The answer on several of them was that it was a slang-y pronunciation of "sharakusai" 洒落臭い = cheeky/impudent. Given his speech pattern, that makes sense.

1
Literally the "dare" is looking (dare ga). So literally it's "who's looking!" However, it does not fall in with English well. I had literally the same problem with Idolmaster Cinderella Girls Gekijou #8. Original said "dare ga ikuka", and I had to switch it to something that's not literally that, to preserve the flow. That reaped similar critique, too.

January 13, 2013

Semi-understanding

I've gotten to the point where I keep spotting places where I think the subs translated the Japanese badly.

One example of that is in the second episode of Dog Days 2, at 13:00. Calloway says kokoroimashita, I'm pretty sure it is, in response to an order from Couverte. Commie translated that as "Understood", but it seems to me that "It would be my pleasure" or "I'd be happy to" would be more accurate.

And in fact, all through this series I keep running into places where I think Commie's translator just filled in something that made sense in context but which wasn't really a translation of what was said.

It's frustrating, because I'm not remotely good enough yet to watch without subtitles, so I'm dependent on them.

So in the bad old days, there wasn't any kind of review done on translations whatsoever. A translator would turn in a translation and it was essentially the subtitler's (and the director's, on the dub end, but in a completely separate process) job to work out what needed to be subtitled where. Sometimes you'd have lines in your translation that made absolutely no sense, or ones where the translation was "????"... in fairness, you didn't always have a Japanese script to work off of (and they ain't always accurate even when you do), and back then people were listening to VHS tapes we sent out. So sometimes you went and asked poor Hiroko from the art department, since she was the only Japanese speaker on the staff, to see if she could figure it out. And if she couldn't, well, you did what you had to do.

That sucked. It wasn't so bad if you had a good translator, since there would be very few holes in the script and you could deal with what was there. It was still okay if the translator was indifferent but at least took copious notes. But, well, some of the translators were bad. Actually a whole lot of them were bad, and the company didn't really have any way to tell that a particular translator was bad.

I got to the point where I could tell "hey, this line is wrong" or even "this is almost right but not quiiiite" without necessarily being able to do anything about it, and that was a little frustrating. Eventually we hired a full-time translator and I could run things past her... and I'd ask her about one line and a whole scene would need to be fixed... and then another... and we eventually got to the point where I'd just run everything past her so that she could check it.

In retrospect I realize how much of an amazing luxury that was! Not only did it fix the outright problems, but it let me be a lot more aggressive in using language for characterization or mood. I could make subtle changes for connotation without worrying that I was missing the same thing on the Japanese end (and, for that matter, sometimes we'd find that it HAD been missed on the Japanese end and I had to scramble for a subtle change for connotation, but hey! That was a lot of fun.)

I wonder if "that would be my pleasure" is a little less formal than the situation requires here. He clearly didn't say "tashikomarimashita", which would be the conventional response and for which "Understood" or "As you command" would have worked just fine, but it's clearly a parallel construct and implying a master-servant relationship. But at the same time, the more accurate translation is hard to formal up any further without getting downright stilted.

8
Yes. It was also for the (future) benefit of my daughter, who was 2 at the time. She still failed a placement test when we moved, and was stuck in an ESL program. I had to pull levers and grease wheels to rescue her.

1
That one may be a JMdict artifact; it looks like someone added a whole bunch of current slang in 2007, including the derogatory ikemen, while the positive one wasn't added until 2011. Google, meanwhile, treats them interchangeably, so it's hard to test with an image search (oddly, insisting on a search for 逝け面 included a picture of the definitely female, definitely attractive Yui Okada).

Both were updated on 4/16/2012, when there was apparently a major effort to work through some of the slang entries (such as adding ヌードル meaning both "noodle" and "TV personality who has appeared in the nude" (nude idol)).

November 01, 2012

Tasteful, or tasteless? Or something else?

Peter Payne has posted the cover of something that's probably a porn title of some kind, whether manga or animated.

I find myself bemused by it. I can see where some might find it offensive, even sacrilegious, but it doesn't affect me that way. My first reaction to it was "Yoshika's panties are the wrong color." (Which tells you where my mind is.)

I am curious as to what it is. Anyone know? (For instance, someone who can read the title?)

October 02, 2012

The original Nanoha series was 2004. A's was 2005. StrikerS was 2007. And Nanoha, Hayate, and Fate are still popular cover girls for these kinds of magazines. That's really rather surprising after all this time! (It's the loli versions, and maybe that's why. Ick.)

September 12, 2012

Uchi dose ka?

In episode 5 of Dog Days 2, Nanami is wandering around a town at night trying to be bait. To that end, she's in disguise and she's wearing a veil, and she is affecting a strange accent I can't place. Obviously she's trying to sound like someone who's rich, so as to make herself seem like a better target for robbery, but...

...but the main think I pick out is that she's pronouncing the copula as "dose" instead of as "dess" or "desu". I don't recall ever running into that before, affected or natural. What is it?

UPDATE: By the way, I ordered the first Japanese BD of Dog Days 2. It should be delivered in about 2 weeks.

September 10, 2012

First question: In episode 3 at 09:57, Couverte shouts something that sounds to me like "Leo-nee! Dettekoi!" The translation was "Leo-nee, come out!" What is it that she actually said?

Second question: In episode 10, 10:09, Nanami says something that they translate as "Bright Power Charge". It begins with ki but I can't work any of the rest of it out; she speaks too fast for me. I've been wondering for a while just what Japanese term they've been translating as "Bright Power" and this seems like a good example of it.

Third question: Episode 10 11:07, Nanami says something that they translate as "Finishing blow". It sounds to me like ichigeki hiisutou where "ichigeki" means "single blow". What's the rest of it?

2
I don't remember these individual instances, but J Greely sounds right on the 1st and 3rd. He's technically right on the second, too, but it's not the word they're using. Kiryoku in Dog Days is read 輝力, the word we translate as "Bright Power". That first kanji is the one meaning "sparkle" or "shine".